The present invention relates to a thin film forming apparatus, more particularly, an electron cyclotron resonance (hereinafter referred to as ECR) sputtering thin film forming apparatus wherein ECR plasma is used for sputtering.
An ECR sputtering thin film forming apparatus has been used for producing a magnetic disc as a recording medium for a hard disc memory. More specifically, the ECR sputtering thin film forming apparatus is used for forming a metallic layer for constituting a magnetic layer on a surface of a base plate, such as glass. In the ECR sputtering thin film forming apparatus, a target is disposed in a vacuum chamber, and the vacuum chamber is connected to an ECR plasma generating cavity, wherein an inert gas is ionized by an ionization action of ECR plasma, the ions are caused to collide against the target to spring out atoms, and the atoms of the target material are adhered to a surface of the base plate disposed in the vacuum chamber.
However, in the conventional ECR sputtering thin film forming apparatus, only a film is formed on one side surface of the base plate. Therefore, especially, in case it is required to form films on both side surfaces of the base plate, two film forming processes have to be carried out by making a film on one side surface at a time, so that complicated mechanism and operations for turning over the base plate are required thus to result in a long processing time and poor throughput.
In view of the above defects, the present invention has been made. An object of the present invention is to provide an ECR sputtering thin film forming apparatus, wherein films are simultaneously formed on both side surfaces of a base plate to thereby improve a throughput.